Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Richard Wright

  They won't survive the night anyway! What are you doing? What are you?

  Far beneath his madness, the annoying little voice droned on. Clive was not obliged to answer it. There was no time for distractions. While the angel had not told him what would happen to those who were not granted everlasting life by morning, it was self-explanatory. Without the gift, they would not spend eternity in the company of angels. Clive might have cried for those he and the chosen would not reach before dawn, except that his tear glands were dry and barren.

  Clive's eyes were problematic in all sorts of ways. With the streets clearing of everybody save his chosen, and the rising wind gusting the fire flecks around in increasingly bewildering patterns, it was difficult to find those he still needed to save. He only knew that the shapes stumbling around him were those already gifted because he could sense them. They were part of him somehow, even those whose hearts he had not taken personally, as though they were all cells in one vast body connected to his brain.

  Clive stopped in the middle of the road he was crossing, knowing he had little to fear from traffic. It had been over an hour since he had seen a moving vehicle, and he wasn't convinced he could be hurt even if one hit him at speed.

  Closing his eyes was like dying. With his nerves sending him such faint signals, and nothing to hear but the wind, the loss of sight put him in a void. The change was so sudden that for a priceless moment, he was divorced from his new afterlife. Seconds passed when he was just Clive again, and he embraced the memory of his mother's smile, drinking and laughing with friends, the smell of Heather's hair...

  He had last seen that hair drenched in her own fresh blood, as she writhed in pain beneath his kitchen knife. Eyes that he had loved since he had first been lucky enough to look into them flinched in strained shock every time he moved his hand, but that was good, because nothing was more important than her information.

  Clive's snapshot memories brought him to Ambrose, the blue angel, and the now. As much as he wanted to stay in the past, he had a job to do, and with his eyes closed it was easier to sense the gifted as they shambled through the city, seeking to swell their numbers. Clive couldn't believe how many there were, and was disturbed that when he touched their minds, he found nothing of personality and soul. Instinct drove them. Surely enough time had passed for the oldest to be approaching Clive's own state of awareness?

  It didn't matter. There was an eternity for them to find themselves again, and Clive would be happy to help. All that mattered now was how he could put them to use.

  Clive found a corpse, pushed his mind into its head, and bade it open its eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ambrose stared at the coffee steaming on the moulded plastic table in front of him, his hand closed around the polystyrene cup, the smell making him want to recoil. He could taste the cleaning fluid last used on the ancient percolator.

  Fortunately, he had not entered the tiny café because he was thirsty. Though his eyes were on the steam rising from the cup, he was barely aware of his surroundings. Pushing past the confines of his body, he let his spirit expand outwards like a mist, onto the litter-strewn street, across the neighbourhood, until it engulfed the city. Ambrose forged himself into a spiritual net, and awaited Pandora's arrival.

  Cursory examination of the newspaper left behind by the last poor soul desperate enough to inflict the café's offerings on himself told Ambrose that he was in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the Northeast of England, a little over two years before the future he had fled. The city, a tough, vibrant place that he had visited many times during his long stay on this planet, was barely two hundred miles from Glasgow, where even now his present day self was plotting and subverting, having yet to fall in love with an angel.

  “Can I get you anything else?” Ambrose felt his metaphysical net crumble, and glared at the acne-cursed girl who had interrupted him. She was only doing her job, hurrying customers not paying for food, freeing up tables for those inclined to spend more. The Ambrose currently living in Glasgow would have sent her away with sick, subtle inclinations in her soul, which she would succumb to or go mad.

  Like he had with Clive Huntley.

  Good days.

  Pulling two twenty pound notes from his pocket, he contained his impulses. “I'd like some privacy. Take these, and don't interrupt me again.” The girl's eyes widened. “One is for the establishment, the other is a tip. Now earn it.” Nodding, she scuttled away.

  Ambrose reached out again, pushing himself wide. He was aware of countless mortals, but dimmed them out, as he did the churches that blinded his sixth sense every time he peered too closely at them. That left six sharp presences within his net. Four were demons. Two were angels. None were Pandora.

  Ambrose did not know whether misjudging his entry to the mortal world had simply made him arrive early, or whether he was in the wrong place altogether. The latter didn't bear thinking about. If Pandora had already emerged, elsewhere in the world, he would be lucky ever to see her again. It was all he could do to push his net wide enough to cover the heart of Newcastle, yet she might not even be on the tiny collection of islands known as Great Britain. A single step within Limbo could see you emerge on the other side of the world.

  Every time a flicker of panic went through him, his net weakened, and he spent precious seconds reinforcing it.

  Stare at the coffee. Don't think. Stare at the coffee, and wait.

  Outside, the world ticked by. A group of youths, sporting a ubiquitous uniform of baseball caps and shell suits, gathered opposite the café door, drank cider, and moved on. Within the spiritual net weaving out from Ambrose, demons played with mortal lives, and angels tried to stop them.

  The sun rose to its zenith, and dipped. It was late afternoon, and the road was quiet. It was rush hour, and cars clogged the street. It was early evening, and taxis dominated the roadways.

  Pandora entered the mortal coil, burning a hole in the net and jarring Ambrose into the present. The waitress, keen to close the café, but unwilling to approach the staring, motionless man with the congealing coffee a second time, was so startled when he stood and walked out of the door that she dropped the cup she was holding. It shattered on the tiles, but she was too relieved to mind. Though his money sat in the pocket of her nylon uniform, she did not consider it payment enough for the long, uneasy afternoon she had spent watching him. Something about the man made her afraid.

  That night, she dreamed of him, and the things he could have her do, and woke feeling sickened and used.

  Calum stared up at Stephen, wondering what he could say. Carefully putting his mug on the carpet, he raised his hands, palms up. “I'll go.” There was no fear at the thought of leaving this cosy sanctuary and being thrust among the evils plaguing the city. After all, he was father to those evils, and where did a father belong if not among his children? Instead, he felt smothered by exhaustion. Keeping his eyes open was a Herculean task, and if he could find somewhere sheltered outside, he thought he might just curl up, close his eyes, and see if Glasgow was still there when he woke up. Calum knew he wasn't the stuff of heroes. Far from it. How many men and women trying to be the best people they could, accidentally brought about a globe-cleansing apocalypse, and were sentenced to the worst of hells by God's own mouthpiece?

  Calum suspected that he was unique in that regard.

  His host was wired for violence, so he eased himself out of the chair. Everything ached, and the small living room twirled around him before settling uneasily. Calum shook his head to see if everything was going to stay in place. It did.

  Mary stood too, and put an arm around her boyfriend's waist. “Ste, look at him. What's he going to do?”

  Stephen wiped his palms on the front of his shirt, but didn't move. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled.

  “I understand.” Calum stepped towards the door. “Remember, you don't have long. Enjoy what time you have left together.”

  They nodded, Mary looking unsure, Stephen resolute.
r />   The lights went out.

  Plunged into what felt like absolute darkness, all three of them cried out. Stephen was the first to rally. “It's all right! It's all right! The power's gone, that's all. Had to happen.” Calum stumbled to a window, knowing that the streetlamps were out. Those lights were never going to come on again, and he wanted to witness the dying city in darkness, feel the weight of what he had wrought.

  There was nothing to see. A thick fog had settled, and apart from the faintest glow of fire falling through the grey, it was featureless. “Christ,” Stephen said, not seeing Calum wince at the choice of words. “When did that roll in?”

  All three of them stepped back when they heard the bellow from below. “Ambroooooose! Come out, come out, my friend. I've fooouuund yooouuu!”

  Heat bled from Calum, and his breathing grew shallow as he recalled what Ambrose had told him about the confrontation with Leviathan. “Shit,” he whispered. “Shit, we're in the wrong place.”

  A shadow passed in front of the window, momentarily blocking out what little light seeped in. Whether it was something flying past, or something immense walking on the ground, Calum did not want to know.

  “We're safe here, right? They won't come inside?” Mary was whispering too. It felt very important not to draw attention to themselves. Calum took her hand and pulled her into a crouch, below the line of the window. Stephen resisted for a moment, clearly debating whether a show of strength was the way forward, and then hunkered down beside them.

  “We're not safe,” Calum told them, steadying his voice, “and we're about twenty feet from the worst place on earth that we could possibly be. We have to run.”

  “But…”

  Calum cut the bigger man off before he could get further. “We run. Now. Otherwise we're going to die.”

  Ambrose sped through the streets of South Gosforth like an Olympic sprinter, his breathing easy, his mind racing. At the edge of his consciousness, the bright light that was Pandora blazed, drawing him like a moth. She had barely moved since arriving in this time and place, and her inactivity was all that prevented Ambrose from spreading his wings and taking to the air. By foot and train, it had taken him twenty minutes to get from the cafe to this leafy suburb of Newcastle, and now he was close.

  Vaulting a small fence, he cut through a children's playground, startling the group of teenagers gathered round a climbing frame to purchase drugs. The only things that distinguished these kids from the cider drinkers he had seen earlier were better clothing, and more expensive habits.

  Streetlights were flaring to life across the city, and as Ambrose leaped the wall at the far side of the playground, he found himself lit in amber. The light made little difference to him, as his night vision was superb. Electric bulbs comforted mortals, appearing to throw back the curtain of night and imposing order on the things it concealed, but it was all illusion. Humankind still feared the dark, and what lurked within it. Deep down, they knew the light was no defence, and they were right. Many creatures wished harm upon them, and none of them minded much whether the lights were on or off. Two years from now, the dead would pull the beating hearts from the living, undeterred by these same glowing bulbs.

  For Ambrose, the night served one purpose alone. Heaven stood outside the time stream, on the far side of Limbo. While the search for Ambrose was concentrated on Glasgow in the future, too many mortals seeing him do impossible things might draw attention to this time zone, and he couldn't afford that. With the darkness masking the full extent of his actions, he could push things further.

  He was already running as fast as it was possible for a man with his body weight to go. Then he went faster still.

  Hammering down the middle of the road, swerving on to the pavement only when the occasional lonely driver went by, he grabbed street signs and lampposts to spin himself around corners, his feet almost silent on the damp tarmac.

  When he reached the final corner, to a narrow path cutting off from the main road that separated the street doors of a small row of terraced houses from their front gardens, he overshot the mark. Slowing himself down in a series of exaggerated steps that sapped a little more of his velocity each time, he turned and jogged lightly back to the path, his breathing only a little harder than usual.

  Stepping on to that dark path, he realised the chase was done. Treading the fashionably cracked flagstones, the only illumination now coming from pallid garden lamps set into the strip of lawn to his left, his worst fears caught up with him. Pandora was in the last house on the row, and Ambrose closed down the small section of his mind reserved for pinpointing her essence. As close as he was, the crazed jumble of pains and half-thoughts that had become her mind were deafening.

  Halfway along the path, shrouded in gloom, he stopped, unable to take another step forward. No alien force seized him. No invisible barrier held him back. Rather, it was the weight of his own heart that snared him. A Pandora waited in the dark house, but not the Pandora he had learned to love. Sly voices from his subconscious asked him to move on, to leave her be. Ambrose had lost his heart, perhaps his mind, to a woman who bore only a physical resemblance to the creature he now pursued. The victory had belonged to the Almighty since Michael tortured the sanity from his angel.

  Backlit by streetlights and the spill leaking from behind curtains drawn fast against night creatures just like him, Ambrose approached the door with dread.

  In the darkness of the nave, all Gemmell could hear was scattered weeping. The voice outside continued. “You can't hide in there any more, my sweet. Leave your pretty one, and come back to us. We won't make it quick, and we won't make it painless, but it will be better than what the angels will do when they arrive to ask why the legions of the damned are standing outside His house.”

  For a moment, Gemmell debated sitting tight, waiting for the promised angels. What stopped him was his experience of the one angel he had seen, and the snarl on her face as she attacked Ambrose Eidolon. It was not a reassuring picture.

  Besides, these were his people, and it was his job to protect them. If God wanted to step up to the plate, He was welcome to do so, but He'd been happy to stay in the background so far.

  Gemmell couldn't believe what he was about to do, and his legs went water-weak at the thought.

  “People,” he said, his voice low. “Listen to me. Whoever that is, he's come for the man who was pretending to be a priest here until an hour ago, when he…” Vanished in a flash of light? “Left.” Nobody answered, and he assumed he had their attention. “I'm going to go outside, to speak to him. I'm going to explain that the one he wants isn't here. I'm going to hope that makes him go away.”

  “You're leaving us?” It sounded like the woman in the headscarf, but he couldn't be sure.

  “Not bloody likely. I'm not setting foot off church property.” It was all he could do to stop himself hyperventilating. The assumption that because the dead wouldn't cross the wall, the things outside wouldn't either, was a vast one. Am I really going to step out there? Yes, he was. His sense of duty wouldn't let him do anything else. “My sergeant Jackie Summer is upstairs. If you need anything urgently, go to her. In the meantime, find somewhere to sit, and shut the hell up. I don't want them outside to get too interested in you. If somebody stands on you, it's probably me trying to find the front door, so don't scream.”

  The next minutes took an age, as Gemmell felt his way to the stairs at the edge of the dais, and walked carefully down them. Arms out, he felt his way to the wall at the edge of the nave, muttering under his breath the whole way to give people some warning that he was coming. Mostly, they shuffled out of his way.

  When he reached the wall, the chanting outside began.

  “Am-brose! Am-brose! Am-brose!” The beat was repetitive, and there was no tune. How could there be, when some screamed the word, others sang it, and some could barely pronounce it? Gemmell tried to imagine what mouths could make some of the noises he heard, which sounded more like evisceration than speech.
It had to be part of the chant, because it kept time.

  Once at the wall, the journey was faster. When he crossed to the vestibule and the exterior doors, feeling isolated despite knowing he was in a room full of people he could not see, a hand dropped on his shoulder. Gemmell jumped, slapping it away. “Are you trying to give me a bloody heart attack?”

  “Sorry,” the voice was deep, not one he recognised from earlier. “I… do you have any family?”

  Gemmell paused. The darkness hid the sudden tears in his eyes, and he was glad. “I have a wife, and a son. He's the most beautiful boy in the world.”

  “Right. It's just, you know… on the off chance you don't come back in, do you want me to get a message to them? I could find them, you know… afterwards.”

  Gemmell swallowed, unable to consider accepting. “Thanks. I'll give them the message myself.” If they survive. If there was going to be a tomorrow in which to find them.

  “Why… why aren't you with them? With all this? Why stay?”

  “Because I've got a job to do,” Gemmell said.

  Opening the door, he stepped into the night before he lost the will to do so.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ambrose stood at the front door of the house, sensing Pandora only a few feet away from him, but unable to force himself further. Even his sharper than human hearing couldn't detect her moving. Had her shattered mind been able to cope with the madness and temptation of limbo? Perhaps, within, he would find nothing more than a husk, a living shell that once contained a vibrant, enchanting mind.

  Without Pandora, none of his rebellion had meaning. Without her, he had destroyed the world for nothing.